Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Note to readers: GMG restores story commenting function, adopts new policy

The Las Vegas Sun has resolved a technical problem that caused a disruption in the reader commenting function at lasvegassun.com and its sister websites lasvegasweekly.com and vegasinc.com.

The problem was related to the third-party platform that Greenspun Media Group, publisher of the sites, had used to moderate and present comments on its sites. That platform, LiveFyre, recently was purchased and was given an end-life date of Feb. 1. As that deadline approached, changes were made to LiveFyre that caused it to become incompatible with some browser settings. In addition, GMG made technical changes to its website management system that also contributed to the disruption.

Beginning today, GMG has launched a new commenting platform, Disqus, that will allow readers to comment on stories via Facebook and Twitter.

In conjunction with the rollout of Disqus, GMG also is revising its reader commenting policies.

In the interest of promoting a constructive dialogue, we will begin disabling the commenting function on certain types of stories that routinely draw comments violating GMG’s User Agreement. These include:

• Breaking news on public safety matters

• Profiles or features involving people who are not public figures

• High school and youth sports

• Stories focusing on ethnicity/minority relations, immigration and religion

• Commentary focusing on people who are not public figures

• The majority of wire stories that appear on the lasvegassun.com home page

Commenting will continue to routinely be enabled on the following types of content:

• Local stories, wire stories and analyses about topical civic/government/public safety issues of relevance to our readers (coverage of school board or city council meetings, legislature, enterprise stories on crime trends or government stories, etc.)

• Stories at vegasinc.com

• Stories at lasvegasweekly.com

• Staff and wire editorials, commentary, analysis, etc.

• Letters to the editor

• Profiles or features involving public figures

As always, GMG’s web editors will have discretion to remove offensive comments from stories or disable the commenting function on any story altogether.

“We’ve found that, unfortunately, certain kinds of stories are prone to drawing offensive comments and abusive conversation. Our new policy is designed to reduce that kind of nonconstructive dialogue while allowing us to continue providing a forum for thoughtful discussion on matters of importance to our community, state and nation,” said Ric Anderson, managing editor of the GMG newsroom. “As we move forward, we continue to urge our readers to help us foster meaningful conversations on our sites by flagging abusive comments. In addition, we are going to adopt a more rigorous escalation of events and more quickly ban readers who refuse to agree to civil discourse.”

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy